


I'm an Emperor, Not a Babysitter

by Petralice



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cute, Cute Kids, Cutesy, Fluff, Kid Fic, Light-Hearted, Not Canon Compliant, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petralice/pseuds/Petralice
Summary: Grandpa Sidious takes five-year-old twins Luke and Leia to Naboo for the day and teaches them how to work together using the Force.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	I'm an Emperor, Not a Babysitter

Summer was not kind to Sith Lords.

Vader had a suit with environmental controls and painkilling medicine that took the edge off for him, but Sidious had…a robe. A robe, and deep furrows in his skin so sensitive they turned from gray to pink even in indirect sunlight, or so he felt. Whenever he traveled anywhere in the daytime, he tended to have his hood up.

Today was only an exception because the twins were with him, and five-year-old Luke hated it when Grandpa Sid had his hood up.

“I don’t understand,” Sidious had practically stuttered years ago, when they’d discovered that was the source of the boy’s distress. “Your father has a helmet and mask on.”

“Come on, Luke,” Padmé had admonished him. “Leia isn’t scared. It’s just a hood, nothing to be afraid of.”

Leia had even stroked her twin brother’s hair to try and calm him down. It had been a sweet moment, and Padmé couldn’t resist taking and keeping a holo of it, but it was to no avail. Luke remained terrified of Sidious when he wore his hood. And so when Sidious knew he was going to be around the twins, or Luke at least, he kept it down. He was a powerful Lord of the dark side of the Force, ruthless and hungry, but he wouldn’t have it said that he was completely without compassion, especially not when those huge blue eyes—so much like Anakin’s had been once—looked at him with such fear.

He’d sent Vader and Padmé on a mission (they seemed to perform so much better when they were together; apart, they did very well, but together they were unstoppable, so he liked to send them both if they were available to him), and usually he had a nanny that took care of the twins when their parents were away, but the nanny was ill. He had backups on backups at his disposal, but today he’d had nothing to plan and had been feeling paternal, so he’d decided to take the children himself to his retreat on Naboo.

Maybe he’d get to relax a little.

The trip there went smoothly enough. Sidious would have liked a little more order as he and two red-robed Royal Guards exited the ship, but the little ones’ shouting couldn’t have been helped. They’d been stuck inside a ship for a long time, and while Luke seemed at home within metal and transparisteel, Leia always much preferred planetside. She’d been antagonizing her brother for the last hour.

“Patience,” Sidious had said, even imposing his will through the Force with the word, but it hadn’t helped all that much. Luke and especially Leia had strong minds at five years old, which would only become stronger. He approved quite a bit.

His retreat lay by a lake and rose up out of a forest, its marble towers and jade tops reminiscent of the palace in Theed, as if in loving memory. He came here rarely, but he always had servants keeping it up, effectively living there to make sure it was always clean and prepared for his potential arrival. His guards carried their things inside—not as regal of an image as he would have liked, but it got the job done.

Now he tried very hard to relax on the dock as the children swam in the lake. He sat on a wooden bench, his yellow-orange eyes heavily lidded and cast up at the sky, listening to them splash in the water and knowing he was safe with one of his guards standing close behind him. Not even the Force could keep his skin from burning in the Naboo sun without his hood up, so the guard carried a red parasol to keep him in the shade.

“Grandpa Sid!” called a tiny female voice.

It had been Vader’s idea for the twins to call Sidious “Grandpa Sid.” He suspected it was some part of Anakin that had thought of it. Padmé was of course completely on board, and the name had stuck before Sidious had had a say.

Sidious looked out at the lake and squinted. “Yes, my dear?”

“Watch how long I can hold my breath!”

“Do not hold your breath, Leia!”

“I can do it!”

“I have no doubt, but please don’t do it here.”

“Why not?”

“Safety.”

Luke popped out of the water and puffed, “I can hold mine longer than she can!”

“No, you can’t!” screeched Leia.

“No breath-holding contests,” Sidious ordered to the twins’ obvious dismay. “Come up onto the dock. _Here_ , you two.”

It took a minute or so, but eventually both children made it up onto the dock and sat cross-legged in front of their adoptive grandfather. Neither of them looked pleased about it. Both had goosebumps on their arms from the cool water of the lake.

“Now,” said Sidious with all the gravity he could muster for two five-year-olds, “I want to give you two a very important assignment.”

They sat up and stared at him, starry-eyed.

Sidious continued, “Your grandpa is old and weak, and doesn’t like to be in the sun, but my guard is very tired from holding up this parasol. I think he needs help. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah!” the twins yelled in unison.

“Very good. Can you two hold up this parasol using the Force, together? Not just Leia, not just Luke, but together, can you protect your Grandpa Sid from the sun?”

“I can do it all by myself!” crowed Luke.

“Nuh-uh! I can do it, not you!” Leia boasted.

Sidious shook his head. “I said together, not separately. Do you understand? I know you do. I want you both, together, to use the Force and lift this parasol from my guard’s hand so he gets a little rest. Can you do that for Grandpa Sid?”

The twins narrowed their eyes and leaned forward. Sidious didn’t look back at his guard, but he could feel the shade of the parasol moving from side to side as his guard relaxed his grip to make it easier for the kids. Still, the parasol wobbled, nothing more, and neither lifted nor hovered above the guard’s hand. Sidious wasn’t sure what he’d expected—the kids hadn’t been able to lift more than a few pebbles at this age—but it had gotten them to stop screaming for a bit, and that was alright with him.

“You’re doing very well,” he said, despite the evidence.

The kids tried for almost five minutes, more than he’d hoped for, but after that they tired of the parasol game.

“Can we please go back in the water, Grandpa Sid?” Luke said.

Sidious cocked his head and smiled. “I have something else in mind. Would you like to explore a stream?”

“I want to go back in the lake,” mumbled Leia, but Sidious had made up his mind, and Luke was once again starry-eyed.

The guard rounded up the twins. They put on their sandals and made their way to a stream, a little way east of Sidious’s towers. The stream gave way to a forest, inviting and mysterious, but the water was what Sidious wanted the kids to pay attention to. He’d grown up in a well-to-do family, but not so well-to-do as to have never played in a stream before, and he found himself wanting to share a bit of his own childhood whimsicality with Luke and Leia.

“Take your sandals off,” he instructed as they got near to the stream. “Put your feet in the water.”

“Is it safe?” asked Luke, but when he saw his sister dip her feet in, he threw off his shoes and put in his feet.

Sidious smiled as the children giggled at the shock of cool water on their toes.

“Look at that!” Luke exclaimed at the smallflewt that buzzed past.

“Can we keep it?” Leia had already caught something in her hands. She was clearly chagrined at her Grandpa Sid’s “no.”

“Can either of you lift any of the insects that live in the water with the Force?” Sidious asked.

Lifting a living object was harder than lifting a non-living object, since a living object resisted, not just physically, but mentally. Leia tried it first, then Luke, but neither could lift a bug by themselves.

“Try it together,” Sidious suggested, sensing their collective frustration.

They tried it together once more, both focusing to the point where their little faces were screwed up in concentration, but they only managed to make several insects stir and take off at their Force-touch.

Sidious just let them relax eventually into the water. Luke did it first, grinning slyly and then scooping a handful of frigid water to fling in his sister’s face. She screamed, not in anger but in surprise and almost delight, and shook her head, flicking water into Luke’s face from her long hair. They stomped around the stream, splashing each other and shouting, and Sidious remembered his youth with a cool smile.

“Do you remember such a time?” Sidious asked his guard. He knew the guard wouldn’t respond. The guard had been trained not to.

He had the guard round up the twins again, and as they made their way back to the towers for lunch, Sidious heard Luke say, “I bet we can lift that thing if we really tried.”

“Lift what? The umbrella?” asked Leia.

“Yeah. Grandpa Sid called it a ‘parbasoll.’ I bet we can lift it up if we tried real hard.”

“Naw,” sniffed Leia. “We tried like six times. We couldn’t lift the parbasoll.”

“But Grandpa Sid said his guard needed help. That he was tired.” Then, quieter, “I want to help that guard. He’s nice.”

“Oh,” she said, considering this. “Then let’s try again. Hey, don’t hold my hand!”

“But it makes it easier if…if I hold your hand.”

Then they were silent. Sidious’s lips curled up just slightly as he felt their concentration gather around them. He slowed his pace, just enough to be noticeable, and the guard slowed with him and relaxed his grip on the parasol once more.

“It’s moving!” squeaked Luke to Leia’s giggling satisfaction as the parasol swayed in the guard’s light grip.

Sidious had the sudden urge to grab the parasol himself and lift it from the guard’s hand with the Force just to see how the twins would react, but he kept himself from helping them. Just as Anakin’s pain had helped turn him into Vader, so would the twins have to deal with much disappointment and struggle in their journeys as his future underlings. Besides, the moment was only just that—a moment. He would let them fail on their own. He hadn’t really expected them to lift the parasol anyway. It was just something to keep them quiet—

A gasp from the guard sent Sidious whirling to look back almost angrily at him; his guards had been trained to make no noise, but when he saw the twins his eyes widened.

The two of them stood a few steps back, hand in hand, their stances wide and their eyes closed. They had their free hands stretched out and looks of concentration so deep that their faces were verily twisted with it.

And the parasol hung in the air, the end of the handle at eye-level. Its canopy rotated as if being spun at the handle by an invisible hand, casting a dancing shadow on the guard below.

“Well done,” Sidious crowed past his own amazement. “I knew you could do it!”

They opened their eyes and grinned simultaneous, identical grins. The parasol would have fallen to the ground if Sidious hadn’t caught it with the Force and lowered it gracefully back into his guard’s hand.

He let out a small “oh!” as the twins threw themselves at him and wrapped him in a hug. He put a hand on each of their backs and gave them little pats until they let go.

“Can we have something sweet after lunch today?” Leia begged, jumping up and down with her brother.

“Yes, you two deserve it. Very well done. See what you can accomplish together when you listen to your grandpa?”

“We’ll always listen to you, Grandpa Sid!” beamed Luke.

“That’s good,” said Sidious, turning his back to them.

They were much stronger in the Force than the norm at this age, like their father before them. That was excellent. Everything was going so very well.

**Author's Note:**

> A much less serious story continued from my Vaderdala "The Power of the Dark Side" fic, which isn't required to understand this one (but read that one too if you'd like). It was inspired by a picture of some people in Royal Guard and Sidious cosplay on a lake dock, a picture that I cannot find again for the life of me. Hope you liked it!


End file.
